Good legislation services the common good.  Too often loud voices and power crush the voice of "the least of these."  Equality of opportunity must be the guiding principle.  Fringe benefits, with an understanding that health care should rise to the level of human right, should be equally available to all employees, part-time included.  Of course, there is much room for and need of generosity that rises above contract obligations.

I grew up admiring a great aunt who lived her whole life providing care for her sister who become somewhat disabled in communication as a youth.  The two, neither of whom was gay, were in the best sense of the word a family.  Employer benefits should have been (and maybe they were) available to the aunt with lesser functional skills.

Some will appropriately argue for expanding health care plans to enable employees to purchase insurance for another unrelated adult in the home because the majority of Fortune 500 employers are ahead of the Commonwealth in meeting the needs of the employees in compensation packages.  I prefer that the Commonwealth and local governments lead the way in ethical investment in the welfare of state employees and those in their family unit who may appropriately be described as building enduring relationships that are mutually beneficial, not just in matrimonial contracts, with biological children, with adopted children, and with incapacitated  adult children.  If the common understanding is that the employee pays for the non-traditional family member's insurance under a state insurance plan, what cost is that to the Commonwealth? 

If insurance is good for one Virginian, surely we do well to avoid interfering in the benefit to all, especially, those in family relationships where the red tape of accessing insurance in group processes can be simplified in planned care linked to state employees.  One can well argue that the many expected relationships of contemporary life, with rising levels of complexity, make life almost unmanageable.   In an era when a lack of computer literacy and reading skills close many doors for some, a culture committed to the common good needs to build health care through naturally occuring units which have a mixed batch of benefits, challenges, and opportunities. 

We're all in this together, but not in the bedroom.  Legislators need to get out of the bedroom except in instances of abusive behavior, whether with adults or minors.  There may well be other exceptions, but I don't wish to talk you to death.